This book presents a series of cases of psychosocial interventions with schizophrenia and other serious mental health difficulties. Co-authored by a range of professionals in different roles, as well as carers and service users. Captures the benefits of a true alliance between the service user and their clinical worker. Details the skills and knowledge needed for interventions in a range of settings, including outreach work and family work, treatment on acute wards, as well as organisational change. Introductions and conclusions to each case examine the implications for practice and policy.

Impairments in mentalizing - the capacity to utilize mental state information to understand oneself and others - have consistently been identified across the developmental continuum of psychosis expression, from the premorbid and prodromal stages to its clinical forms. Mentalizing difficulties in psychosis have been investigated using an array of different methodologies, including novel experimental tasks, narrative assessments, self-report measures, as well as neuroscientific and computational methods. These studies have primarily examined how mentalizing disturbances relate to symptom dimensions and functional outcomes in clinical samples, as well as the transition to clinical psychosis among those who are at increased risk. More recently, clinical adaptations of mentalization-based treatments (MBT) and other psychotherapeutic approaches with a focus on supporting people suffering with psychosis reflect on their own and others’ mental states, such as Metacognitive Reflection and Insight Therapy (MERIT), have been reported in the literature.

An Integrated Approach to Family Work for Psychosis is a manual for using cognitive behavioural approach to working with families of people with severe mental illness. The authors, all experienced clinicians, discuss the various core components of family work, including what constitutes family work, when it might be offered, and how and where it might be applied. As well as these core concerns, the authors also look at reframing challenges and overcoming common personal and external barriers to effective family work. Each chapter can be read individually or as part of the integrated manual. The central argument of the book is that family work must be individualised and it offers a clear approach to engaging and working with families to ensure that this happens, including guidance on how to link components of a service user's plan with their family's strengths and strategies for reducing stress. The book addressed both theory and practice, and concentrates on the experience of mental illness for the service user and their family, providing a focus for intervention. Exploring family work as an integrated psychosocial and educational support strategy, this manual will increase the confidence and competence of new family workers - mental health workers, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists - and broaden the knowledge of those already working in the area.

Research shows that neuro- and social cognition have a decisive influence on functional outcome in people with schizophrenia. In this publication, world-renowned experts summarize the latest research on approaches to assessing and treating cognition in schizophrenia. The book is organized to take the reader through the steps from definitions and assessment of cognition to research on the relevance of cognition in everyday life, to chapters which focus on treatments for cognitive disorders. The reader will learn about the NIMH MATRICS initiative which has provided clinicians and researchers with the tools to define and assess neuro- and social cognitive functioning in people with schizophrenia. Then the treatments for neuro and social cognitive deficits are discussed in several chapters which give an overview of cognitive remediation approaches, accompanied by concrete treatment examples. The reader will also learn about the latest results of pharmacological interventions for cognitive deficits. A final chapter focuses on the importance of addressing motivational deficits when treating cognition, and offers treatment approaches to enhance motivation. This publication is essential reading for clinicians and researchers in the fields of psychiatry, psychology as well as students and other professions working with people who have schizophrenia.

There have been exciting new developments in the treatment of schizophrenia and related psychoses in recent decades. Clinical guidelines increasingly recommend that patients be offered evidence-based psychosocial treatments in addition to medications, as such interventions can produce greater improvements and may prevent relapses better compared with medications alone. In parallel with these recent advancements, an evolution in the way cognitive-behavioral therapies are being conceptualized and implemented has occurred due to the incorporation of novel strategies that promote psychological processes such as acceptance and mindfulness. While there are a variety of acceptance/mindfulness approaches being developed to address psychosis, there is not currently a dominant approach. In Incorporating Acceptance and Mindfulness into the Treatment of Psychosis, Brandon Gaudiano brings together the researchers and clinicians working at the cutting edge of acceptance/mindfulness therapies for psychosis to compare and contrast emerging approaches and discuss them within the context of the more traditional cognitive-behavioral interventions. The book includes a section that focuses on six distinct treatment models that incorporate acceptance and mindfulness strategies for psychosis and a section that provides a synthesis and analysis of acceptance/mindfulness approaches to psychosis. It concludes with recommendations for moving the research forward in a constructive and responsible way. This volume will be an important resource for researchers and clinicians interested in gaining a deeper understanding of mindfulness- and acceptance-based approaches and newer psychosocial treatments for severe mental illness.

The "epigenetic puzzle" which is schizophrenia, forms the focus of this Monograph, But The Authors Do Not Sit Comfortably With The Notion That this is an entity. Rather, they approach the non-affective psychoses on a broad epidemiological base, ascertaining cases of so-called "functional" psychoses over a quarter of a century. They examine admission policies, showing that patients are admitted to hospital on the grounds of their particular presentation, rather than their diagnosis. They explore Differences Between Males And Females With Psychotic Disorders, And Show that gender is a more powerful influence than diagnosis. They investigate trends over time, and find that demography is the major influence. Looking at criminality, they show that the factors predicting criminal Behaviour In Individuals With Psychotic Illness Are Much The Same In those without psychotic illness. And they trace the longitudinal course of illness, putting paid to the schizophrenia/manic depression dichotomy.; This monograph is an overview of the ideas and many of the findings generated by a highly productive group of researchers. It has a good chance to become one of the standard references in several of the key aspects of schizophrenia.

This book covers some of the most serious mental health conditions that top the global disease burden and affect 3% of the general population. However, most research on psychotic disorders is undertaken in the West, and few studies have been systematically carried out in Asia despite global interest in regional differences. This work offers a unique and coherent account of these disorders and their treatment in Hong Kong over the last thirty years. Chen and his research programme’s pioneering work has ranged from the impact of early intervention on outcomes and relapse prevention, to the renaming of psychosis to reduce stigma. The studies have contributed to wider international debates on the optimal management of the condition. Their investigations in semantics and cognition, as well as cognition-enhancing exercise interventions, have provided novel insights into deficits encountered in psychotic disorders and how they might be ameliorated. The research has also explored subjective experiences of psychosis and elicited unique perspectives in patients of Asian origin. Each topic is divided into three sections: a global background of the challenges encountered; research findings from Hong Kong; and reflections that place the data in scientific and clinical contexts and offer future directions. “This book contains important research into specific problems facing persons with psychosis and schizophrenia in Hong Kong, arising from environment factors, stigma, and treatment shortfalls. Its insights would help “overcome barriers to facilitate mental health work”, which is how Professor Eric Chen describes the work of the Advisory Committee on Mental Health, and what he has admirably devoted himself to do over the years.” —Wong Yan-Lung SC, chairman, Advisory Committee on Mental Health, Hong Kong, 2017–2023 ‘This learned and comprehensive opus about schizophrenia, its causes, course, and outcomes reaches far beyond its regional scope and presents the best of the world’s current knowledge about schizophrenia as well as the significant contribution to it made by the authors working in Hong Kong.’ —Norman Sartorius, MD, PhD, FRCPsych, president, Association of the Improvement of Mental Health Programs, Geneva